Does/has anyone else ever felt like this or am I crazy?

In fairness, I've basically been raising kids and doing household management since I was 13 (so over half my life) and I think that contributes strongly to this feeling, but I still feel like it might be nice to know I'm not alone in it?

I had a miscarriage last week, and I'm getting an IUD once I'm medically cleared to get one. My DD (dear daughter) is 6 months and the other kids in the house (my siblings) are 16, 14, and 7 now. And like, while babies are a lot of work, it's so different having a baby when the rest of the kids in the house are big kids than when they're mostly little kids. The big kids are so independent and they're going to be out of the house before I know it and it makes me feel kind of...lost? It's nice that the teenagers help out some around the house, entertain the baby, are generally really great kids but it's so weird to not have to PARENT as much as I did, say, ten or even five years ago. Is this a normal thing as our kids get older? Or have I just built my whole identity around keeping these tiny humans alive and making them into functional humans like an asshole and now they're getting bigger and I'm not going to know what to do with myself now?

Comments (3)

I think that's normal. They're old enough to clothes and bathe themselves, they can feed themselves and I hope they can pick-up after themselves (🤞.) However, they will need other kinds of parenting. You did the basic survival stuff, but there's a lot of emotional and social stuff left.

I think that's normal. They're old enough to clothes and bathe themse...

Posted
11/30/2018

I think that's normal. They're old enough to clothes and bathe themselves, they can feed themselves and I hope they can pick-up after themselves (🤞.) However, they will need other kinds of parenting. You did the basic survival stuff, but there's a lot of emotional and social stuff left.

Yeah, it's definitely a new phase. And I'm already dealing with some of the aspects of parenting once they're out of your house with the two older younger siblings I have, so I know what the future holds. But it really is super weird to not be in that day to day CAREGIVING. My fiance and I went out for a little while tonight and I was talking as we were walking back into the house about how I was going to have so much stuff to do before I could go to bed and...it was all done for me by the teenagers. Surreal. I was brushing their teeth for them just yesterday!

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